Friday, March 30, 2007
What this blog is about is revolutionary socialist politics, the uncovering of obscure texts from the revolutionary socialist tradition, the state of class struggle today and, when I eventually get around to it, loud music that makes your ears bleed. Not that I actually write much about current politics to be truthful but this is a lazy blog I'm afraid. This blogger being a disciple of Lafargue you understand.
So the general line for this blog is no personal crapola. Except this once. And I make this exception out of sheer naked hared for that sub-species of hippy vermin known as social workers. Now let's be clear, I do not mean those decent people who help your Granny when she comes out of hospital with her shopping and mobility problems, nor do I mean the kind of folks who toil for rubbish pay helping those with severe disabilities. The curs I'm talking about are the fuck-witted twats who assume they know better than you how to run your life. The kind of dorks who swallow and regurgitate whole moronic theories spewed forth by tenth rate polytechnic lecturers who have never had experience in the field. Basically I'm talking about human detritus.
One of the defining characteristics of this species of woolly-minded uber-liberal tosspots, as good liberals always they are in fact little better than cops, is a dislike of science. They are afraid of science as they recognise, in their dim fashion, that science is the production of human culture and they are afraid of Man as they cannot envisage a future in which man lives in harmony in nature having first conquered it. For them that which is good and natural can only be that which Man has not touched, and that which is bad and artificial is the realm of Man. Rather than seeing Man within nature they abstract Man and by doing so alienate their own essence from nature. Theirs is a world view fit only for fearful cynics cowering in their low grade universities while reading that veritable bible of mediocrity The Guardian.
A while back one of these dim-bulbs denounced the idea of cochlear implants for children on the grounds that such an operation, an example of man 'conquering' nature, would be an act of Audism. That is by giving a child the ability to hear, as is normal with our species, an act of discrimination against those who cannot hear would be perpetrated. You see according to this twisted logic it would be better to bring a child up deaf. The argument being that the 'deaf community', that is an abstract group to which a child may or may not have a relationship, must not be diminished by potential members gaining the ability to hear.
To me it is very strange that those who advocate this disgusting bilge do not take a sharp pointed knife and pierce their eardrums if hearing is so repugnant to them. And if we are to follow their logic then we must conclude that wearing spectacles to correct sight problems is an act of discrimination against the cross eyed, short sighted and long sighted communities. Clearly to liberate wimminkind, make no mistake without a single exception all these hippy types are feminists, it is not the state but spectacles that must be smashed!
Fuck that shit! Anyways, I'm pleased to report that one little girl I happen to know, has just had a successful cochlear implant, thanks to the tremendous development of technique which we owe to that most revolutionary of social systems capitalism She is reported to be feeling just fine and dandy if a bit baffled as to why a chunk of her hair has been shaved off. So to celebrate this I thought the readers of this blog might appreciate a picture of the child in question together with this blogger.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
The crux of the Persian crisis is the struggle over the division of the profit of its oil industry. Up to now, the overwhelming majority of these profits have gone, in one form or another, into British hands, as can be seen from the following figures:
Received by British Govt. in taxation * Royalties to Persian Govt. * Gross Profits
£Mn. * £Mn * £Mn
1947 15 * 7 * 34
1948 28 * 9 * 53
1949 23 * 13.5 * 41
That the financial arrangements were too much against the interests of Persia is clear from the fact that after the outbreak of the crisis, even the representatives of the AIOC did not dare to pretend that the royalties paid to the Persian Government were anywhere near sufficient. Accordingly they proposed temporarily to fix the sum of royalties, which had been £7 million in 1947, £9 million in 1948 and £13.5 million in 1949, at an interim payment of £10 million, plus £3 million monthly, ie, a total of £46 million a year.
The Persian government was not satisfied with these concessions and insisted on nationalisation of the oil industry, and so the strange situation has come about that a Persian Government of large absentee landlords is fighting for the nationalisation of industry, while a British government which claims to be Socialist is opposing this measure tooth and nail.
To add another paradox, the Persian ruling class, which for generations had been an absolutely loyal agent of British imperialism, which was a “quisling”, totally indifferent and even opposed to any national movement, is now raising high the banner of national independence. Besides this, they even come out with a so-called “socialism”: the fight against the poverty of the Persian masses has become the battle cry of Mossadiq and Co., for which the foreign imperialist company, AIOC, serves as the butt.
The Persian Government put the blame for all the social ills, for the terrible poverty of the mass of the people, on the British exploitation of the oil wealth of the country. And to drive the point home, when Mr. Jackson, the head of the AIOC delegates to Teheran, went to see Dr. Mossadiq, the Persian Premier insisted that he go and see the notorious slums of Teheran, which are “all the fault of the Oil Company”.
While British imperialism had found allies in the feudal landowners of Persia for its social policy of keeping the country backward and thus the wages paid low, now the same landowners try to put the blame for the backwardness and poverty solely on British imperialism.
This strange policy of Mossadiq and Co. reflects the deep social and national contradictions in which the country finds itself. Mossadiq tries to raise himself above the two contending basic forces, British imperialism on the one hand, and the exploited anti-imperialist masses on the other, with the threat of the British navy which keeps the masses “in their place”, and with the help of the masses which compels imperialism to retreat and leave the oil industry - the only important industry in the country - to the landowners’ government.
To add to the complications of this situation there is the intervention of Russia and of its agency, the Stalinist (Tudeh) Party.
For 150 years Persia was a field in which two Powers fought for influence: Britain and Russia. During the last forty years, since the beginning of the extraction of oil, the struggle for control over Persia has sharpened considerably. Since the Second World War the issues have become ven more vital, as Persia and the countries round it have come to be of paramount importance in the world production of oil, the life-blood of both peace and war industries and of transport. In 1950 Persia produced 32.3 million metric tons of oil, Saudi Arabia, 26.9; Kuwait, 17.3; Iraq, 6.5. Together they produced 82 million tons. As against this the target of the oil industry of USSR as a whole for 1950 was only 35.4 million tons. What is more natural than that the Stalinist bureaucracy should be attracted to the rich Middle Eastern oilfields, including Persia? That nevertheless the Tudeh Party is not reaping the fruits, is due first of all to the fact that Russia has exposed her imperialist greed for Persian oil and has thus taken the wind out of the sails of the “anti-imperialist” propaganda of the Tudeh Party. It was only five years ago that Russia demanded an oil concession in northern Persia similar to the present British one in the South. The people’s outcry against any oil concessions to a foreign country - whether Britain or Russia - was so great that when the Persian Government refused to grant the concession to Russia, the Tudeh Party not only was not able to raise opposition to the Government, but lost nearly all the mass influence it had formerly had.
The position of US imperialism in the Persian crisis is full of contradictions. On the one hand it is in competition with the British oil interests, hence its successful effort in monopolising the oil of Saudi Arabia, its success in getting control over 50 per cent of the Kuwait oil and 25 per cent of that of Iraq. Persian oil, closed to American companies, was always a tempting object. And it must be a great temptation for American companies to send their tankers to carry away the Persian oil and thus get a foothold in this field. On the other hand, their experience of the nationalisation of the oil industry is Mexico must make it clear to the American capitalists that the nationalisation of the oil industry of Persia could be the first step towards the eviction of al the foreign imperialist oil companies in the Middle East. Hence the “solidarity” of USA with Britain in the Persian crisis. This “solidarity” is enhanced by the needs of the American struggle against Russia over the division of the world.
The present policy of the British Government in Persia is blatantly anti-socialist. To oppose nationalisation of the oil industry, to insist on the “right” of Britain to draw profits from Persia by exploiting the Persian workers, is a capitalist-imperialist policy which can have one of the following results: (1) A continuation of the exploitation of the oil works of Iran by British capitalism, with a greater or lesser part of the profits going to the ruling class and Government of Persia which collaborates with British imperialism. (2) The Persian landlords and capitalists with their Government can make use of the hatred of the Persian workers for their imperialist exploiters in order to transfer the oil industry from the hands of imperialism to the hands of the Persian Government; thus changing the exploiters, but not the fate of the exploited. (3) Russia can use this hatred of British imperialism to gain mass influence in Persia and turn the country into another Russian gubernia, thus changing one exploiting imperialism for another. (4) The Persian workers can expropriate the British owners and establish workers’ control over the oil industry and workers power in Iran as a whole. The duty of British socialists is to help the Persian workers to achieve the last result.
A British Socialist Government should take the following steps in the Persian crisis : Renounce the property rights of Britain in Persia. Call on the Persian workers to take hold of the former AIOC. With the voluntary renunciation of ownership rights in Persia, such an appeal would have a tremendous echo among the Persian workers, making it practically impossible for Mossadiq and Co. to take hold of the oil industry. With the only significant industry of Persia under workers’ control the rule of the feudal landlords and capitalists over the country as a whole would become impossible. The oil workers would attract the rest of the Persian workers and peasants to them and a workers’ and farmers’ government would be established. Such a government would be a true and loyal friend of Socialist Britain, a reliable antagonist to both Russia and American imperialism.
With the hep of capital investments British imperialism held, exploited and oppressed hundreds of millions of people. With an active anti-imperialist policy of renouncing and fighting these capitalist imperialists, a Socialist Britain would be able to fid hundreds of millions of allies in the struggle for socialism, against the imperialist war for the division of the world, for peace.
Socialist Review
Vol. 1, No. 6, August-September 1951
Labels: Iran, Iraq, Oil, SWP, Trotskyism
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Today is not Women's Day it is International Working Women's Day and it is a socialist celebration of our Sisters and Mothers. it is a celebration of the part they have and will play in the struggle for communism and the destruction of class society.
It is a day on which we should reflect on the disgrace it is that feminists have stolen, just as the petty bourgeoisie always pick the pockets of the workers, this socialist celebration from the workers' movement. It is a day on which we should reflect on the fate of those women who strive for equal rights, including reproductive rights, in Iraq.
It is a day on which we should reflect on the fact that in Britain today working women remain underpaid and largely confined to low status occupations. That so many young male workers are also consigned to such occupations is not a triumph for womens' liberation, though without doubt may feminists will regard it as a triumph over men in general, but evidence of the defeats of the past come back to haunt the whole of the working class today.
While talking of the past and its remembrance let us recall that it was in 1910 at a conference held by the Socialist International in Copenhagen that Clara Zetkin, pictured above in that year with Rosa Luxemburg, moved the resolution that March 8 be forever International Working Womens' Day. Let us also note that the building in which the conference was held was until this week the Ungdomshuset which, without doubt, many of our sisters have fought to defend from the violence of the police only this week.
Labels: Socialism, Women's Liberation
One of the themes of turncoat vermin masquerading as socialists and pro-war liberal trash both is that 'the left' is anti-American. It's an easy lie told by drunken buffoons who spend more time drinking their expense accounts than they do seeking out the truth. But no matter in but a few short years these clowns will be forgotten so I'll say no more for the moment.
The truth is rather more complex and the genuine socialist left, that part of the socialist left which fought both Stalinism and knew it to be but another form of class society, has never been anti-American. Quite the contrary the anti-Stalinist left has long looked to and talked of the important role which American socialists and the American working class will play in the destruction of class society.
Approximately a hundred years ago Lenin, a man who greatly admired American ingenuity and industry, pointed to the similarities between Russia and the USA. And rightly so as it was no accident that serfdom and slavery were destroyed, by a rising youthful capitalism, at the same point in history for similar reasons.
The similarities and contrasts between the two countries remain today modified only by the defeat of the old USSR in the Cold War and the shattering of most of its empire. The tragedy being that the USSR was destroyed from within by virtue of its being unable to compete with the larger, more efficient, economy of the USA and not by the working class. A working class that was, due to Stalinism, leaderless and lacked consciousness of its social revolutionary nature.
The American empire by contrast is intact its maw dripping with fresh blood. But internally it is as rotten as the old USSR ever was containing within its borders the seeds of its destruction. Sadly those best able to destroy the nightmarish colossus that is official America are as leaderless and as lacking in consciousness as their Russian comrades were and are.
Nonetheless there have always been devoted and brave comrades who have fought in the very belly of the beast to develop class consciousness amongst those whose destiny it is to bring down the clay colossus that bestrides the globe. This post, the first of a series, aims to simply remind the few brave souls who read this blog that of some of those heroic figures. In pride of place Hal Draper, now go read his pamphlet The Two Souls of Socialism.
Labels: America, Trotskyism
Sunday, March 04, 2007
HATE THE POLICE
Mommy, mommy, mommy
Look at your son
You might have loved me
But now I got a gun
You better stay out of my way
I think I've had a bad day
I've had a bad day
I've had a bad day
Daddy, daddy, daddy
Proud of your son
Got himself a good job
Killing niggers and Mexicans
I'll tell you one thing, it's true
You can't find justice, it'll find you
It'll find you
It'll find you
People tell policemen
They've met their match
Down in them desert sands
Mudhoney won't catch
Mudhoney hates policemen, yes, it's true
You can't find justice, it'll find you
It'll find you
It'll find youIt'll find you
Mommy, mommy
Look at your son
You might have loved me
A gun
You better stay out of my way
I've had a bad day
I've had a bad day
Mommy, I've had a bad day
Mommy, I've had a bad day
Mommy
Labels: Music
